Senate wants FCC to conduct “advanced blocking” study

The Senate wants the FCC to launch a probe of content filtering technologies …

The United States Senate has unanimously passed a bill that requires the Federal Communications Commission to explore what "advanced blocking technologies" are available to parents to help filter out "indecent or objectionable programming." The "Child Safe Viewing Act" (S. 602) was sponsored by Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas.

"With over 500 channels and video streaming, parents could use a little help monitoring what their kids watch when they are not in the room," Pryor said in a press statement following the passage on Wednesday. "Today’s technology to protect children from indecency goes above and beyond the capabilities of the V-Chip. It’s time for the FCC to take a fresh look at how the market can empower parents with more tools to choose appropriate programming for their children."

The text of the bill notes that the average child watches four hours of television a day. It also observes that "99.9 percent of all consumer complaints logged by the Federal Communications Commission in the first quarter of 2006 regarding radio and television broadcasting were because of obscenity, indecency, and profanity." Many of those complaints are controversial, it should be noted, because they come from Web based autoforms that allow people who have not actually seen a program to file a complaint.

But the law does focus on empowering parents to take control of new media technologies to deal with undesired content, rather than handing the job over to the government. It asks the FCC to focus the inquiry on blocking systems for a "wide variety of distribution platforms," including wireless and Internet, and an array of devices, including DVD players, set top boxes, and wireless applications.

The probe should also look at apps that can filter closed captioning language, and "operate independently of ratings pre-assigned by the creator of such video or audio programming." The last requirement doubtless responds to complaints that the rating system that accompanies the V-Chip sometimes misses objectionable fare.

The bill doesn't tell the FCC to make any rules. But an inquiry like this could eventually lead to laws or FCC rules requiring manufacturers to include certain filtering technologies in their applications. After Congress asked broadcasters to establish a voluntary rating system for TV content in 1996, the Commission ordered TV manufacturers to include the V-Chip in all new television sets 13 inches or bigger. The requirement went into effect as of January 1, 2000.

Pryor's bill gives the FCC 270 days to get the inquiry job done. The legislation has since been sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.